Trina doesn’t look at Aleksander. She looks at me.
“Here’s how it works,” she says calmly, as if she’s explaining a math problem. “I get Volkov. I get Winslow. And when Vlad goes down, I get Angeloff too. This town finally gets the queen it deserves.”
Her eyes flick toward Jack. “And Jack gets his piece. Enough money to keep him happy until he burns out.”
Jack grins, leaning back like this is all a game. “Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse, right?” He laughs at his own line, and it’s clear he means it.
My chest tightens. I stare at him—my brother—unable to recognize the person sitting there. How could he be this cold, this reckless? A psycho in plain sight, and I didn’t see it until now.
Trina ignores him, still watching me. Her smile is small, cruel. “You, Teresa, are simply in the way.”
Aleksander laughs, a raw, broken sound that ends in a cough. He tries to pull himself upright, but his hand slips, blood smearing the desk. He looks at me. The hatred is still there, tinged by anger that any of this could happen in his own house.
“Run,” he says so quietly I almost miss it.
The guard beside me shifts, the gun barrel kissing my hip to remind me what I already know.
“Trina,” I say, my voice breaking on her name. “Please. I—” My palms clamp my belly. “The baby.”
“Which is why this needs to be neat.”
“What does that even mean? Neat?”
“No spectacle,” she replies. “No messy ballistics for forensics to trace to the wrong gun. Aleksander will be cast as the man who finally snapped, consumed by grief and vodka, finally finishing the girl who cursed his house. He dies of complications. You die of his madness. The city shakes its head, the board signs the papers, regulators get an exciting memo to read.” She grins. “And the empire grows with a steadier hand at the wheel.”
My knees want to give. I grip the desk to keep them from folding.
“Vlad will come,” I state, because saying it out loud makes it feel slightly less like a wish and more like a plan. “He’ll?—”
“Someone will take care of Vlad,” Trina says confidently. “The Abramovs have been eager to prove their devotion. And if not them, another hand. He isn’t as untouchable as he thinks. No one is.”
“He’ll kill you,” I say. “Both of you.”
Jack lifts his chin. “Not a chance.”
Trina laughs a soft, amused laugh, like I’ve just said something naïve. She gestures around us with her glass, the sweep of the chandelier light catching in the cut crystal.
“This house isn’t my uncle’s anymore,” she says. “It’s mine. Every man in this room, every guard outside no longer answers to him. They answer to me. Loyalty can be bought, Teresa, and I paid very well.”
My stomach twists as I glance at the stone-faced guards lining the walls. None of them move. None of them look shocked at what Jack did, at their boss bleeding out on the rug or what Trina just declared. They stand there like statues, like they’ve already accepted their new queen.
“If Vlad tries to storm these gates,” Trina continues, her tone smooth, unhurried, “he’ll find an army waiting. And it won’t matter how many Angels he drags behind him. This is my fortress now.”
Trina sets her empty glass on the bar and turns. “I am sorry,” she says. “You were a friend. But now you’re just an inconvenience.”She sighs, a soft little release that makes me want to claw her face. “We’ll make it quick. I can promise you that one kindness.”
The men move at a nod. Efficient. Hands under my elbows, guiding.
“Trina,” I try again, stubbornness and the will to live refusing to die. “Please.”
She meets my eyes. “If there was another way,” she says, “we’d take it. There isn’t.”
Aleksander coughs wetly. He drags himself up on one elbow, spitting a curse in Russian. He glares at Trina with a hate so concentrated it gleams.
“You won’t last on top,” he says. “Betrayal like this… it always comes back to haunt you.”
“I’ll handle it if it does,” she says, refilling her drink. “I always do.”
The guards angle me toward the French doors near the bookcase that lead out to the gardens. Jack looks away when I search his face, pleading. Trina smooths an invisible wrinkle from her slacks as if bored.
